Secrets of the Dual
by Avrie Moss
Summary: The Dualbenders kept their secret for millenia, but every secret is revealed eventually. The only thing different about this one was that it reached to the core of the nations and stood to tear the peace apart indefinately. Please read and review!
1. Prologue

Prologue

Since the dawn of man it was the sole duty of the Avatar to keep the peace and protect the four nations. He was the bridge between our world and the spirit's world, given power over the elements so that he could maintain the fragile peace in the world. In the Knowledge Spirit's Library, there used to be a book that told of how the Avatar received 50% of the world's power, while the thousands of ordinary benders received only 25%.

There was 25% left over. This 25% went to a small group of people, who proved just how powerful that little power can be when it is not split up across the globe. These people are far stronger then the ordinary bender, for they do not specialize in just one element. It is normal for these people to be able to bend two or three, or, on rare occasion, all four elements. They may not have the power of the Avatar or the numbers of ordinary benders, but they have perfected an art that few Avatars have ever dared attempt.

Dualbending.

It is not like Avatars have not done it before, it is more like they prefer to use one element at a time or simply cannot focus on moving more than one or two elements at once. These people, though, have turned it into their everyday life and made an art of it.

A thousand years ago, the text that mentioned the Dualbenders was hidden deep in the Library. No one was told about the discovery that a child had been born with the ability to control the four elements, while the current Avatar was still alive and well. The only people who knew about it were the parents of that child and they, fearing for their and their child's life, hid the child far from the four nations and recorded only a short note of the incident in a storybook about the Avatar. The book was then stashed in the Knowledge Spirit's Library and remained there for centuries.

Until the Library was destroyed.

The knowledge of the Dualbenders lost, their race began to grow and flourish. Some of them walked openly along the streets of their own nation, an island 300 miles west of the fire nation where the first Dualbender had fled to. Other Dualbenders hid in plain sight, mastering their abilities, but never telling anyone of their skills in case they had committed a crime by being half Avatar.

A candle can only hide for so long in the shadows.

The Dualbenders grew bolder; they wished to be done hiding and live beside the other benders without fear of discovery. But once a secret's out, it can't be taken back, no matter the consequences. If the world's not ready to learn a secret, then those consequences can lead to death.

And that's where we start.

**OK, so this is my first Avatar fic, thought up a few years ago when I had a really **_**really**_** weird dream. I kind of feel like I rushed the prologue and didn't do as good on it as I could've, but oh well. I'll fix it later if it bugs me enough. If it doesn't make any sense please tell me in the reviews because I'm half asleep right now and can't really tell. If you have an OC you'd like in the story PM and I'll tell you what I'm looking for.**

**Sorry it's so short, but I'll try to update soon, so for now just read and review.**


	2. That Blows

That Blows

Water trickled slowly from the top of the fountain, emptying out into a small pool. The stone of the fountain was crumbling and completely covered in moss, and out of several broken spaces frogs had made their home. A small army of cattails was growing out of the larger pool, practically obscuring the entire fountain.

The alley the fountain was in did not even look worthy enough to house this pathetic excuse of a water feature. Trash was scattered all over the ground after a hungry animal's late night meal, covered by another layer of trash. The buildings around the alley were cramped tight together, practically crumbling to pieces on top of each other. There was so much broken glass and shadows in the tiny space that it was either walk on sharp broken wine bottles or be robbed by the creepers hiding in the darkness.

Yet, people came through here on a regular basis. Just to get to that rundown old fountain. People do a lot of strange things to get their wishes granted; walking through the most dangerous alley in Ba Sing Se was one of them. Ironically, the fountain wasn't even a wishing fountain.

A young girl and boy walked atop the glass and trash in nothing more than broken sandals. The girl, who looked about fourteen, had her forehead wrinkled and her loose-hanging black hair whipping in front of her green eyes as she pulled at the boy's arm in an attempt to get him back out of the alley. She was wearing the faded and patch strewn holes of a rich Earthbender, which she had undoubtedly swiped from the junkyard.

The boy was around sixteen and wore ragged Earth Kingdom clothes typically seen on the traders that came through the city during the holidays. He bore a close resemblance to the girl, sharing the same dark hair color, nose, and eyes. Though, it would not be easy to tell that their eyes were the same because while the girls were filled with anxiety and fear his were filled with determination and purpose. The boy was more dirt covered then the girl as well, and had a larger forehead than she and slightly smaller cheekbones as well.

"Tiego!" The girl whined in a high, shrill voice. "Please, don't! Just wait another month! We'll find someone by then, I know we will! Or…I'll find a class somewhere and learn how to do it myself! Just another month, please!"

"Mada," he said firmly, "let go. We've already spent an entire year looking for someone; it's time to find someone on the Council to help us."

"Just one more month! I mean, come on, Tiego! It'll cost you a fortune just to get in, and you and I don't even know how much it'll cost to get the help Narie needs!"

"And what do you suggest?" Tiego snapped. "We've searched everywhere else. If you can name one place we haven't looked yet, maybe I'll reconsider."

She sniffed and let go of his arm. "I don't trust them. They're just a bunch of lying, self-indulged rich folk. They don't care about us, and there's no way they'd help street filth…without trying to take us to Yen's Island."

"Mada?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up." He put his hands on her shoulders. "It'll be fine, Mada. We'll finally have this worked out. Can you even imagine how much better our lives will be without Narie being…Narie?"

"Still living in a shack and searching for change on the streets."

"But peaceful." Tiego let go off her and flashed a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but only made Mada feel even worse. He stepped towards the fountain and pulled three shining gold pieces out of his pocket. The gold shined slightly as he dropped the coins into a small slit at the top of the fountain.

The fountain creaked and the water stopped coming out of the top. The cattails were sucked below as the fountain's bottom dropped away to allow a stairway to shove its way out of the fountain. The frogs fled in all directions, croaking so loud that the constant noise of the city was drowned out.

Tiego stepped onto the stairs and waved to Mada. "See you later." The fountain closed back up behind him as he descended, and the cattails popped into place. There was a loud splutter, but the pathetic stream of water continued again. Mada was alone in the alley, her only company the army of angry frogs.

In the room adjacent to the one Tiego entered, was a small space mostly dominated by a long brown table. The table was made of smooth obsidian and decorated with a corsage of different sized candles. The rest of the room was gold tiled walls and expensive granite floors arranged in a pattern so that when viewed from the ceiling the room looked like the Earth Kingdom symbol.

There were six people sitting in the chairs around the table, with five of the people practically leaning across the table to slit one of the others throat as they argued viciously. The person not participating in this verbal brawl was a young woman with long brown hair braided down her back. She had a small round face that made her large blue eyes seem to protrude from her head. Her figure was built more for power than looks, making her seem like she had a man's body. She wasn't wearing the "proper" clothes for a female Waterbender either, settling instead on the traditional men's clothing.

She was the representative for the Water-Airbenders, or the Cloudbenders, and, like all the representatives, she called herself by the Dualbender type she was. After all, if a representative were to go by their real name it would place their family and friends at risk to their enemies.

That is why she went by Cloud.

The other people in the room also used pseudonyms. The grizzly old man to her right was the representative of the Earth-Airbenders, Energy. The young woman with long red hair and polished nails so sharp that they could be used as tools for cutting meat was the representative of the Fire-Airbenders, Force. The thickly built and rarely happy man at the end of the table was Lava, representative of the Fire-Earthbenders. Across from Force was the dark skinned Mud, who represented the Water-Earthbenders.

And the most prominent of the representatives was the man beside Mud, who looked like an ant next to the large man. The guy was a walking wall of meat, with more bulk in his arms than normal people had in their thighs. Even without his muscles though, the man had a powerful, room quieting essence. Some said it was his chilling gaze and rigid posture, but most said it was simply that his spirit was far stronger than that of the average person. He was cocky and arrogant and without a doubt was the most selfish representative in history, but he knew what he wanted and what he wanted got done. Always.

Cloud hated him with all her heart.

Today's agenda for the representatives was supposed to be resolving the civil war that was breaking out in the homeland; the only problem with this was that the potential war was over whether or not to expose themselves to the world, and the representatives already had their own civil war going on about that one. It was the yearly argument for them, with no progress ever being made because of the representatives constantly switching which side they were on. Cloud had always been against exposure, while Steam was always for it. That left the other four representatives to hash it out over whose side they wanted to be on. This year, she had Mud and Energy on her side, but had so far left it to them to battle off Force and Lava while she entered a nonverbal war against Steam.

So far, Steam was winning.

Tiego stared at the extravagant room, feeling very much out of place. There were huge jade pillars lining the pathway to the front desk with the heads of golden dragons swallowing the bottom of the pillars while the dragons' bodies became 2D masterpieces and stretched out across the floor. There was no furniture besides that front desk; people who came here were expected to bend their own seats out of the floor or the small pools that ran along the walls.

The front desk seemed miles away as he walked towards it. The few people he passed looked up at him as he passed, sneered, and turned to the person next to them to gossip over why a peasant would enter the Council House. The lady at the front desk didn't even glance at him; she was far too busy flirting with the guard posted behind her at the entrance to a large doorway.

He rapped his knuckles on the desk and watched the woman roll her eyes and turn towards him without even trying to hide how annoyed she was that he had interrupted her. "What do you need?" she asked in a deliberately slow drawl.

Every person in that room was silent as they listened for his reply. "I need a Waterbender. Or at least a Waterbending teacher."

The woman forced a smile. "That's great, hon." She slid a piece of paper and pen towards him. "Just fill out this form and we'll get back to you as _soon_ as possible."

She turned around and began to speak with the guard again. Tiego took a deep breath and swallowed the sharp words that rose in his throat. "I can't read."

The room erupted into laughter. The woman turned back to him, laughing so hard she was almost to tears. "Then I suggest you find a boat to take you to Yen's Island, because there's nothing we can do for you here."

"Nothing at all? Really?"

"Tragic isn't it? Good day, then." The woman began to turn back towards the guard.

"Look," Tiego growled, "I didn't come down here to be ignored by some stuck up receptionist." He leaned forward across the desk. "My sister's a Proavatar. She can't control her powers, and if she doesn't get help from a Waterbender there's a good chance she could reveal us all. If you can't even bother to _look _for a Waterbender, than at least find someone who can teach my other sister the healing basics so we can take care of her ourselves."

The woman's mouth was half open and she was fanning herself with her hand, as if she couldn't believe that a peasant would speak to her this way. The guard approached the desk with his sword drawn and laid the weapon on the desk. "She said there's nothing she can do. Now _leave._"

"If there's nothing she can do," Tiego jabbed a finger at the woman and then at the door behind them, "then let me talk to the representatives because I know they _can_ do something."

The guard shook his head and walked around the desk to escort him to the exit. Tiego glared at the man a minute before giving a loud sigh.

"_I'm going to get myself thrown in jail for this,"_ he thought.

Cloud and Steam continued to lock eyes with each other. To Cloud, it was a battle of willpower to see who looked away first. Looking away would mean defeat, and seemingly the loss of the upper hand in the current argument. They'd had this battle many times before, with the victor always winning the verbal contest if they won the nonverbal one.

Today, like always, Steam was winning.

She didn't understand it. He had this way of looking at you in what seemed like a thousand different ways. There was a playful twinkle of amusement, an arrogant eyebrow raise, a smug stillness in his eye that drove her nuts. It was like him telling her without speaking that he was better than her and knew it, that she was going to lose and he knew it. At the same time his eyes could be cold and frightening, judging her body and dress with a disapproving scowl.

It always made her feel like Steam was a huge rock pressing down on her, a small glass figurine. There was no chance for the figurine to survive.

She was about to break, in seconds she would look away. Steam knew it too, and smiling smugly he looked away as if Cloud was nothing more than a pathetic fly. He had lost, but still managed to win.

Steam stood, and the representatives instantly turned and waited for him to speak. "We've been through this over and over. The pros and cons have not changed. By revealing ourselves we could risk the genocide of a Dualbenders, but if we do not reveal ourselves we face the growing plagues in our country that are resulting from our continued secrecy. War is at hand. The nations are beginning to suspect a presence besides their own. Our nation is poor and weak; if we were ever to be hit by a hurricane Yen's Island would be destroyed. So why do we continue to hide? Because of a fear that if we reveal ourselves the people will reject us as freaks?"

"And that's why we should wait," said Cloud. "In a few years, our numbers will be higher and our military stronger. We will be more prepared to face off an angry nation-."

"Or we will be weaker if this war truly breaks out. If we reveal this year we will have an advantage; they will not have an Avatar ready to protect them," Lava growled.

"But if we waited another year," Mud chimed, "we would have a chance to evacuate our people in the nations to Yen's Island."

"And make us an easier target to destroy."

Steam shook his head and placed his hands on his chair. "Like I said, we've been through this before. Last year we came to an agreement to wait another year, as we did the year before and as the representatives before us chose to do since the first Council was established. It is time to stop hiding.

"You all know the first Dualbender and Proavatar, Yen. It is not impossible for us to imagine what she must have been thinking when she found that in addition to her Firebending abilities she could move earth and air and water. But she couldn't be the Avatar, because she didn't have the ability to enter the Spirit World. Her parents, ordinary people, decided that it would be best to hide her abilities from the world and fled, a decision that has governed our people since. But her father, a well known scholar in his time, wanted to leave something behind that would reveal what Dualbenders were. He hid it in the Knowledge Spirit's Library, not knowing that the Library would one day be lost."

"We know the story, Steam," said Energy. "What is your point?"

He smiled. "I'm getting there. Recently, I have learned that a thief had rediscovered the Library and stolen several documents." Steam paused and placed a small brown box on the table. "One of which was the document Yen's father had written of Dualbenders on. Fate led me to find it, and if you'll all remember Yen's vow-."

There was a loud crash. The representatives turned in their seats to stare at a teenage boy who had Earthbended his way into the room. Tiego bowed quickly, but then jumped up before he was asked to rise.

"My lords and ladies, I need your help. My sister is a Proavatar and she badly needs a Waterbender's help." The guards hustled in after him and grabbed him by the arms. "Please! She can't control her abilities! She could-."

He was dragged out. Steam glared at the guard, who dropped into a low bow and began to apologize over and over for the interruption.

"Just get out," Steam snapped. The guard fled, Earthbending the wall back into place as he left. "Now," he turned back to the other representatives, "Yen vowed that the Dualbenders will reveal themselves if her father's work was found. We have held true to all of her other laws, and I expect you to honor that one as well."

Cloud stared at the plain box in shock. He'd won. Steam had done it after all; he'd found the loophole he needed to force them to expose themselves. Truly, there was nothing this man could not achieve.

She looked up. "You're saying you've found the storybook her father wrote in. Prove it. Show it to us."

"Of course." Steam slid the top of the box, and the representatives leaned forward as one to see what was inside.

The box didn't hold a book. Instead, sitting in the middle of the box amidst a small pool of blood, was a human hand.

** Ah, don't you just hate it when that happens? Poor rich people.**

** Did everyone catch on that the representatives have the same names as the elements they can bend? For example: Steam represents the Water-Firebenders, who are called Steambenders because water and fire make steam. I know it's a little bit flawed, but just roll with it OK? In case anyone's struggling with which elements equal which name I'm going to put the list:**

**Water-Firebenders—Steambenders**

**Water-Earthbenders—Mudbenders**

**Water-Airbenders—Cloudbenders**

**Fire-Earthbenders—Lavabenders**

**Fire-Airbenders—Forcebenders**

**Earth-Airbenders—Energybenders**

** So I didn't get to put any Dualbending in this chapter, but don't worry it's coming. Also, I should probably mention that this story isn't going to have any of the old characters in it, at least not more than the occasional reference. It takes place in Korra's time instead, but since I don't know anything about Korra I'm going to pretend she doesn't exist and make my own Avatar. Sorry.**

** I'd also like to point out that I'm going to put a poll up on my profile asking which side you support in the Dualbenders' argument: going public or continuing to hide.**

** Thanks to everyone who's read this so far. Read and review, please!**


	3. Narie the Great

Narie the Great

The street was filled with people screaming and trying to shove their way through the crowds. Some were attempting to reach the small vendors selling their weirs of candy, fruit, jewelry, rugs, pottery, and other household necessities. Others were practically being trampled into the dirt as they tried to squeeze through the mess just to get home. Most people were crowding around the middle of the street, struggling to get good spots to see the biweekly street fight.

The arena the two Earthbenders had to fight in was no bigger than a boxing ring, the ropes formed by the crowds' bodies. The challenger, dressed in the rough brown and green armor of a soldier, sneered as he circled his opponent. The man appeared at ease and certain of himself, cockily taunting his older opponent and dancing about the way new recruits do. The opponent, who fought here every day, calmly stared straight ahead as the soldier moved about him, waiting patiently for the telltale vibrations that would come when the soldier made his move.

The man had been doing the fights for fifteen years, going from a young boy eager to master his bending to a hardened old man. He'd never lost a fight, and his reputation had grown faster than weeds. But with his growing reputation came the constant plague of challengers and the pressure from fans. He had gone up in the world from a street rat to master, but had lost his freedom in the process. Outside of the ring, he had to completely change his appearance to go anywhere without getting in a fight. He had to move homes regularly to stay safe from angry challengers, some of whom found him anyways. For now, though, he was in the ring where he belonged and nothing else mattered. His opponent may be a foolish soldier, but he wasn't exhausted from a day of fighting and wearing much better armor than the fighter's simple leather shorts.

The soldier finally ended his taunting, picking a large rock out of the earth and slamming it toward the man. The man's fist moved up and slammed the man's away from his face, while his other hand picked up a rock like the soldier had done and slammed it into his exposed stomach. The soldier leaned over grabbing his stomach and the man smiled and kicked his feet at the ground, making the earth under the soldier move out from underneath him. He fell, and the crowd began to cheer.

"NARIE!"

Narie jumped and stumbled away from the window, her sketchpad dropping to the ground along with her quill and ink. The black goo splattered across the wooden floor, soaking into her ragged dress. Mada sighed and set the food she'd brought in down, pulling the towel off her shoulder so she could mop up the mess. Narie watched quietly, standing and watching her sister clean the mess up rather than helping.

"You know better than to stand too close to the window! What if someone had seen you?" Mada sighed again and left the blackened towel on the floor. She slid the curtains closed and turned to look at the rest of the room. "And look at this mess!"

The room wasn't much to begin with, nothing more than a closet sized space with a lumpy mattress on the floor and a pile of notebooks in the corner. Now, though, the floor was covered with broken glass and torn up paper. Feathers were strewn here in there in the mess of glass and paper.

Mada glanced up at Narie, who merely shrugged and looked away. She knelt down and picked up a half melted piece of blue glass. "You know you're not supposed to be bending. Look at all this glass. Were you even trying to make something or were you just trying to make a mess?"

Narie shrugged and picked up her sketchpad, pulling a second quill out from behind her ear. She dipped its end into the ink still on the floor and slashed several letters on the page. She shoved the sketchpad towards Mada, frowning unhappily as she put the quill back behind her dark brown hair.

Mada read the words aloud. "'I want to see it.' See what, Narie?"

Narie smiled and set the sketchpad down. She pointed outside the window. Mada peered outside, but didn't understand what Narie was pointing to. "Just tell me what you want to see!"

Sighing, Narie pulled four glass discs out from under the mattress. They looked like mini Frisbees. Narie tossed one in the air and pointed at it as it fell, her eyes changing from pale blue to a brilliant amber as fire shot from her fingertips. The fire contacted the disc seconds before it hit the ground, making it just another shattered mess on the floor. She smiled and tossed another one into the air, this time breaking it into pieces with an invisible 'force' that shot from her hand. Her eyes changed from amber to grey to green. The third disc was destroyed when Narie flicked her hand and a stone shot from the wall and broke the disc into two pieces.

Mada took a deep breath and met her sister's carefree gaze with as commanding a face as she could muster. "So not only have you been hanging around by the window, you've been bending all day as well!"

'_I'm getting better_,' Narie wrote.

"Maybe, but you still can't control it." Mada pointed at the small black burns growing on Narie's sketchbook. "And that's exactly what I'm talking about. You can go to the fight once you learn to control it…and once you _stop_ trying to expose us!"

The final disc slammed into the ground. Narie's eyes returned to their normal blue color, although they continued to spark with the rage of a Firebender. Several of the pieces of paper on the floor caught fire and the dirt room began to creak and lean inwards.

'_So never, then?'_

Mada rolled her eyes. "I found some medicine on my way back, why don't we try it?"

Narie clenched her fists and sat down by the window. She reopening the curtains and pulled her charred sketchbook onto her knees in an act of defiance. She began to scribble on the sketchpad, ignoring Mada's continued presence for a few seconds longer, before looking up and giving her a look that asked why she was still here.

Exasperated, Mada picked up the dirty towel and left the room.

The ground rose up to meet Tiego as he flew through the air. He slammed into the earth, sliding through several feet of trash. Jumping up, he grabbed a fistful of dirt in one hand and clenched his other into a fist. The hand without dirt in it lit on fire as his eyes became two different colors: amber and green.

The soldier laughed at him, as did the receptionist who held onto his shoulder and stared at Tiego without ever venturing beyond the soldier's back. The water pulled out of the fountain as the soldier twisted his hand downwards into a half moon form. The man's eyes had switched from brown to blue, but as he used one of his hands to form a strange symbol with his fingers the right eye became brown again. The air seemed to ripple as the soldier made another half moon dip with his other hand, and the invisible force collided with the water floating in the air. A small, fluffy cloud appeared where the two elements met, slowly encasing the soldier and receptionist.

And with them was going his last hope.

"You're a Waterbender! And you think you're so much better than us that you can't even teach my sister the basic healing spell that would help us?"

The laughter stung his ears like a thousand bells ringing at once. "Stupid peasant. I don't think; I know." Their heads were the only thing visible now, but they were slowly disappearing as the cloud grew larger.

Tiego extinguished the fire in his hand and let the dirt fall to the ground. A strange feeling settled over him, as if the world were coated in honey and moving ten times slower because of it. His reasoning and judgment seemed to slip away from him. It was done now. There was nothing more that he could do to keep them off Yen's Island. Narie would continue to have her crippling headaches, and the money he had that hadn't gone into this pointless trip would be exhausted when he next bought her medicine.

"'Proavatar' really means nothing anymore?"

He heard a rough, grinding sound as the entrance to the fountain slid open. "Na, kid, it just means nothing coming from people like you."

The cloud began to fade away and, even though he knew they were gone, Tiego said his last argument. "She can't control it. One day she's going to Dualbend while there's a crowd present to watch and then our secret will be out." As the final wisps of the cloud floated out of the alley, Tiego whispered one more thing: "If I don't reveal us first."

The fountain appeared, seeming to him like a mirror of his own predicament. For several minutes, Tiego stood there and brooded, trying to figure out what his next step would be. He liked to have the future laid out in front of him, set in place and not for others to change and meddle with as they saw fit. People were what made plans fail; he'd learned that the hard way. But for someone like him, people were the only way he could attempt to try his plans. The process was backwards for the people whose help he needed either didn't want to help or messed it all up.

He hated to admit it, but Narie was without a doubt one of these people.

At least she had an excuse; Narie couldn't help being who she was whereas the others could. The headaches came of their own accord, which in turn caused Narie's moodiness and argumentativeness. The spunk and rebellion came from being cooped up all day which came from her inability to control her bending abilities, but that wasn't her fault either. There were other things, though, that he couldn't explain. The insanity, the talking to herself, the daydreams, the drawings, the stories, and the refusal to speak. The latter he found easiest to explain, because the silence was only towards Mada and not him. Narie and Mada's relationship was poor after all, and rarely had he seen a day where they didn't seem ready to claw eachother's throats out. And the rest? Some of it was explainable, but he had never understood why she refused so violently to hide her Dualbending abilities. Now, it was becoming clearer to him, but despite his best efforts his sister still remained a mystery to him.

And she also continued to drain the money from his pockets.

It wasn't just the money she was draining, though. Mada and he were both losing the drive to keep moving, and more and more they were considering giving Narie what she wanted by sending her to the Dualbender capital with their older sister. The only problem with that was that Narie and Mada were in some sort of silent war over whether or not Narie would get her way. It wasn't totally unusual for them to start these kinds of petty fights over who would get their way, but this one was worse than the others.

The fights were almost always over something ridiculous, like Narie's refusal to clean her own messes up; Mada was a perfectionist and Narie…could care less what Mada thought. So that's why the fight over Yen's Island had taken place over paper, because Narie believed that she should have no reason to talk to Mada if all they were going to do was argue. Mada had snapped, and everything that the two had been upset about over the last year became an angry back and forth in Narie's sketchbook. Instead of making them feel better, the fight had kindled their fight to a new level. Mada had come to the conclusion that she could not live with her sister's attitude anymore and resolved to try Waterbending to eliminate Narie's split personalities and headaches. Narie came to the conclusion that they were all wasting their time by pretending they could get along, believing that it would be better for her to live far away from Mada on Yen's Island.

Somehow, Tiego had been dragged into the mess too. He became the mediator between the two of them, because Narie saw no reason to give _him_ the silent treatment. Lately, he couldn't do anything for one of them without the other getting jealous. And that was what had spurred on his latest thoughts: that if the normal benders knew what they were, they'd be able to help him.

Everything was supposed to have gotten so much better after the war ended. And it did, for the normal people. But since no one knew about the Dualbenders and the losses they'd suffered during the war, no one came to help. The people living in the worst parts of the big cities were no longer ordinary benders, but Dualbenders with nowhere else to go. If someone just told the Avatar about them…well, it was her duty to keep the peace right? So the nations would have to help them! He'd never understood why they were hiding; was there really any reason to keep doing so?

Seeing as Narie would probably get her way and reveal them anyways, why not just get it over with?

Tiego paused and looked around him. He hadn't even noticed he'd been walking, but somehow he'd managed to walk a mile into the city. He was far away from the alley now, but still stuck in the slums of Ba Sing Se. In fact, he wasn't too far from their home, where Mada would probably be waiting to see if he had succeeded. Not wanting to come home empty handed, Tiego turned around and headed towards Mashi Dojo. The Mashi Dojo was a Waterbending dojo, but they hadn't been able to ask anyone there for help because none of the teachers or students were Dualbenders. They did have Waterbending scrolls, though, and those Mada could use. If he could just find one that had basic healing moves…

Of course, swiping one of those while pretending to be a garbage boy was a lot harder than it looked.

Coming up on the dojo, however, he heard the shouts and cries of a fight, as well as the notable 'swoosh' and 'zing' of an element being bended. Tiego came upon another alley, where a young girl was fighting off three cloaked bandits at one time. She wore expensive Earthbender clothes, but she had dark hair and pale skin as Tiego and his sisters did, making it clear to him at once that she was from one of the Water Tribes. He saw that she was tall and had a fairly appealing figure, but the shadows hid her face from him.

She seemed to be holding her own in the fight quite well, bending a ring of rocks around her and launching them at the bandits if they came to close. One of them drew a knife and prepared to throw it at her, and Tiego pulled his arm back to roast the man to a fine crisp. Before he could, the girl flipped her hand up and water flung itself out of a puddle on the ground, slapping the knife from his hand. The men paused in their assault, and then turned and fled from the alley.

Tiego walked towards the girl quietly, the gears in his head turning wildly. Maybe he could bring Mada back something better than a Waterbending scroll. Perhaps he could bring her back a Master. Narie always said fate owed them, was it finally paying up?

The girl continued to stare after the men, debating whether or not to chase after them. The puddle water had fallen back to the ground, as had the rocks. He could finally see her face, it was small and round, barren of any freckles. Definitely from the Water Tribes.

"Um…" He had no clue what to say.

She whipped around, twisting her hand quickly so that the water at her feet spiraled back up and pointed. The spiraled water column pointed at his heart, a deadly blue point ready to spear itself straight through his chest.

"Hey, easy!" he cried. "I just saw you getting attacked; I would've helped, but it looked like you didn't need it."

"And how do I know you're not one of them?"

Tiego shrugged. "Trust your gut?"

The girl smiled slightly, nothing more than a twitch at the corner of her mouth. The water fell back to the ground as she abandoned her bending position. "You live here?"

"Nearby. So, um…two elements?" He waited patiently for her to answer the code. To identify Dualbenders, the Council had invented a code. If they suspected someone to be a Dualbender or thought they saw someone Dualbending, they simply had to ask 'two elements.' The Dualbenders would know the proper response of 'sometimes three' while ordinary benders would ask what they were talking about. Tiego had seen her Dualbending without a doubt though, so the question was more of a formality to let her know he was one as well.

That's why he was completely surprised with her answer. She straightened her back and gave that coy mini smile again. "Four actually."

"Four?" She was a Proavatar? That made no sense! She had to be the same age as Narie and for two Proavatars to be born in the same year or even the same century was incredibly rare. Impossible really. And why didn't she just give the normal response?

Tiego nearly slapped himself.

Not 'Proavatar'. Just Avatar. She was Fricha of the Northern Water Tribe, the Avatar.

**And I finally updated! Hooray! This chapter was originally supposed to be longer, but I decided to split it into two chapters. I'll put up the second part tomorrow.**

**Just so everyone knows, the poll is still up on my profile. (I finally got around to putting it up.) So go there and vote on whether you think the Dualbenders should reveal themselves or continue to hide. Right now, reveal is winning by a lot.**

**I am also accepting OCs; if anyone wants to submit one PM me and I will give you the form. Please do not put an OC in the reviews.**

**Review people! The more reviews I get the faster I write, so please give me some feedback! **


	4. Proavatars and Avatars

Proavatars and Avatars

"Narie, did you already eat your dinner? Because they said you have to take this stuff with food…Narie?"

Mada edged open the door, frowning as she saw Narie sitting by the window once again. She sighed and took a step into the room. There was a crack from her foot and she gasped and leaped back, jumping onto one foot to see if she'd broken something that it had made a noise like that. Narie snickered and Mada looked away from her foot and saw that Narie had made the mess of broken glass on the floor into one smooth layer of clear glass. She could see the wood floor beneath it, except for in the shattered oval that she'd stepped in. Thank goodness she'd been wearing her shoes, or her foot would have become a glass porcupine.

Narie returned her glare with an amused smirk. Her sister wasn't wearing any shoes, but by holding out her hands as if she was curtseying she was able to bend the glass into staying solid beneath her feet. Her eyes were a strange kaleidoscope of amber, green, and brown. She held out her sketchbook.

'_Shall we fight now_?'

Mada crossed her arms. "That depends. Are you going to talk now?"

Narie took her sketchbook back and scribbled quickly in it. '_Why should I?'_

"Because I thought you wanted to go to the fight."

She laughed. Finally, Narie spoke. "Like you'd ever take me to that. You're too embarrassed of me to let me out of my room."

"That's not true, Narie. I can't _trust_ you outside of your room!"

Her lip curled. "Why not?"

"Because you'll Dualbend in front of all those people!"

"Then just let me stay in the post office!" Narie snapped.

Mada smiled, which only seemed to make Narie angrier. "You can come down if you don't Dualbend. And you have to get rid of this glass. And take the medicine."

Narie frowned and nodded slowly. She put her hands to the floor and her hands and the glass under them slowly turned red. The glass began to melt slowly, becoming chunky slabs of red glass. Narie took her hands off the floor and spun her finger in a counterclockwise motion. The glass on the floor slowly followed her finger around in its circle, and then began to follow her finger as she traced three spirals inside the circle. The glass turned clear again as Narie drew three wavy lines under the spirals.

She picked the glass sculpture up carefully and handed it to Mada. "You wanted something for the window right?"

Mada rolled her eyes, but smiled. "You should have done the Earthbending symbol; not the Waterbending symbol."

"Should I make another one?"

"NO!"

The fight was a hundred times better up close than from her room. For one, it was no longer just two men circling each other. Now it was two men circling each other and having an intense staring contest to try and see what the opponent's next move would be. She could also finally make out the more subtle Earthbending moves they used, like covering their hands in rocks or shifting the ground underneath each other into moving tectonic plates. There was still something missing, however, because the glass of the post office still cut her off from actually being at the fight.

Mada said that the closer you got to the fight, the more sand and dirt that got flung up got into your eyes and onto your clothes. But that was what Narie wanted, to feel the fight, to be so close that all she'd have to do was step forward and she'd be in that arena as well…

And not only was she not getting the full experience of the fight, but her headache was growing worse. Even after she'd coughed down that horrible medicine and had sat and _rested_ like Mada thought she should do, it persisted. She'd tried to ignore it by following the fights closely, sketching out the new bending moves in her book as fast as she could and taking notes on the brawl in her long, curly handwriting. For a few minutes, she'd even put the sketchbook aside and just tried Mada's _resting_ advice. But it didn't help. Not only had it been boring and a complete waste of her time outside of her room, but it'd actually made her _worse_. She refused to tell Mada, though, because then it'd just be back to her room. She was going to watch the fight, no matter how bad she felt or what Mada said.

Unfortunately, Mudslide, the fighter, was running low on challengers after just three matches. It wasn't like his usual biweekly fights where the challengers lined up by the dozens, no. This was one of the days where challengers had to be forced out of the crowd by men trying to prove their worth. And on those days, the men ran out right about this time.

'_No way_,' Narie thought. '_I did not come down here just to watch three fights and then have to leave!'_

The post office door opened and one of Mudslide's lady friends strolled in, tinkering about and doing a good job of looking as stupid as she was. She walked over to Mada with her hands held up strangely, as if touching one thing might break one of her carefully manicured nails. "Do you have any mail for me today?"

Somehow, Mada managed to act nice and caring to the woman. "I don't think so, Heybra."

Heybra sucked in a deep breath and began to pout a little. "Well, can you _check_?" she asked superiorly.

Mada smiled and said she'd check. Narie watched with disdain as Mada stood and headed to the back to check for the nonexistent mail. Shaking her head with pity, Narie stood and slipped out of the store.

It was probably incredibly stupid of Tiego to have told the Avatar about his problem and even stupider to lead her back to his home to meet Narie, but without a doubt the stupidest thing he'd done was agree to teach her Firebending.

Fricha, it seemed, had mastered everything except Firebending. Thinking Airbending would be the hardest to learn she had mastered it first after Waterbending and then come to Ba Sing Se to master Earthbending, which she had apparently just finished. But Fricha had friends and family in Ba Sing Se and was loathe to leave. So when Tiego had naively suggested that he teach her Firebending in exchange for her helping Mada learn Waterbending there had been no hesitation in her answer.

She'd been curious to know how a Waterbender couldn't find at least one teacher in Ba Sing Se, but Tiego had shied away from answering because it had to deal with their financial situation and Dualbender laws. Then she'd asked about the plans for meeting up with Mada for lessons, where Tiego had foolishly made a joke about a second student, Narie, possibly sneaking in. And then that had led to him needing to explain who the second student would be and then explaining the whole Narie mess.

Fricha was fairly curious about Narie. She listened intently as Tiego explained Narie's headaches and occasional lack of control over her bending. He also mentioned her moodiness and the ongoing argument between his sibling, and then she'd cut him off.

"Your sister is a Waterbender as well?"

"Both of them. I'm the only Firebender."

"And neither of them knows how to bend?"

"Yeah."

"I think your sister is sick because she does not bend. The energy is getting trapped inside her, giving her pain and discomfort until it eventually cannot be contained any longer and is released."

"So…you mean, there's nothing wrong with Narie?"

"Not quite. Her headaches are easy to understand and fix, but the moodiness and irritability is harder."

Tiego shrugged. It wasn't really when you considered she had to be locked in her room all day to stop her from revealing Dualbending to the world. But he couldn't say that. Especially not to the Avatar. He wondered if a Proavatar and an Avatar had ever met before. It was a strange thing to think of to say the least, because he could hardly imagine a Proavatar and an Avatar coming together to do anything but fight.

But he guessed that that was what was happening today.

There was some sort of commotion going on in the street, by Mudslide and his fighting arena. He paid it no mind; probably just another well known fighter coming to challenge him. He held the door open for Fricha and she walked into the post office, examining it with a discontented frown.

He didn't see what was so wrong about it; this _was_ the best room in their house. The post office was a strong rectangular room with a large glass window making up most of the wall to the outside, only half visible because of the couch that was shoved in front of it. There was a half empty bookcase on the west wall and a few pictures on the east, with the walls seemingly separated by a large, ragged rug. The counter was nothing more than recycled wood from the bar down the street and the entrance to the backroom…was a squeaky purple curtain that had tears in several places. OK, so maybe it was pretty bad…

There was a woman waiting at the counter. She stood there and flipped her hair every which way, turning her nose up at Tiego and Fricha as they entered. "Did you find it?"

"I'm still looking." Mada called from the backroom.

Tiego stepped past the woman and ducked under the counter. "Mada, where's Narie? I have someone I'd like you two to meet."

"What do you mean? She's out there isn't she?"

"No. Is she supposed to be?" Tiego said slowly.

Mada pulled back the curtain. She swore when she saw the empty couch and ducked under the counter quickly, racing to the window and looking up and down the street for Narie.

"Excuse me," said the woman huffily, "but where is my mail?"

"You didn't have any, OK?" Mada snapped. "Now please leave because no matter how many times I look there will be no mail!"

"Well!" The woman said. She sniffed several times and then stomped out of the post office.

Tiego glanced at Fricha apologetically and hurried towards Mada. "You mean you let her come downstairs? I thought you were against that!"

"I was! But I made a deal with her that if she behaved she could come down to watch the fight!"

"And you really thought she'd do that?"

"I-. That had better not be her!"

"Where is she?" Tiego asked.

Mada pointed towards the fight, and through the growing crowd Tiego could make out a slim figure in peasant clothes taking a stance against Mudslide. Mudslide looked confused as to who his opponent was, and Narie took this as an excuse to stomp on the ground and launch several pointed rocks towards his chest. He barely deflected, but once again hesitated when he should have attacked. This time, Narie pulled her arms up above the head and raised the entire arena into the air.

Tiego jumped when Fricha tapped him on the shoulder. She had her arms crossed and was frowning like she'd just eaten something sour. "Is that your sister?"

"Um…yeah…"

"Hold on. I thought you said your sister was a Waterbender."

Mada somehow managed to tense up even more than she had been watching Narie fight. Tiego scratched his head and looked out at Narie and then back at Fricha. "Can I get back to you on that?"

**I'll keep the author's note short. Poll, OCs, review. The more review I get the faster I write!**


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